OK I just got this one on VH. And by a hair on my....well I barely got it anyhow. A nice map with a few interesting tricks that took me some time to figure out. I played once to try to figure out the map. Once to determine how to max out efficiency and then finally for keeps. It is somewhat like you play for 1/4 of the game and then put it on auto pilot and hope you had the right timing.
First off it took me forever just to get across the river. Once I figured that out all the other tricks weren't too bad. I spent a while figuring out where I had to get and how to get there. What space was available and so forth. Once you get the ins and outs of this one down it is fairly strightforward. Just jump on the iron and it falls into place after that.
So basically at the beginning throw everything into getting the iron going and the rest can be handled at your leisure.
What I did was start with 3 wood and two meat. After wood I went to military. Then I gated across the river and pressed hard on the wolves with archers. I increased my hunters to about six and worked on the wolves and moat on my side. I used gatehouses to jump my archers outward to take on the wolves. Using cutters or archers as bait to coax the wolves in.
I jumped once to the right to the left of the signpost and then to the other side of the signpost to clear the southern wolves so I could get at the iron. I then took my spears and 6 archers for the bears and moved on the ore plateau. I took it using some deleted stone to fix the stairs. I had a quarry going by then. While moving on the ore I also jumped staight out to the quarry area. Although I had the quarry, if I had to wait for the first shipment I don't think I would have made it this time through. So finding the extra stone was a must.
I immediately got 3 iron going and everything else was clockwork.
The wolves are numerous, but are just a matter of time using the gatehouses and occasional coaxing.
I got the 3 valley farms going first. After clearing the wolves I cleared some areas for 3 more. I used the hunters for early food, which they provided plenty for my low pop. I then moved up to bread and it is fairly easy to get enough for the criteria and also for extra rations using hunters as a supplement and for a little food bonus.
I kept pop at 40. I think 32 is possible, but I wanted to add a couple of extra securities and I had enough food anyhow. I ran an apothecary and two wells. One for my granary and one for the ore. I had a fire on the mines. Without the well it would have caused me to lose.
I used two quarries and 4 tethers. Sleeping the quarries and then the tethers. This was more than enough to meet the requirement.
Tax money is easy by getting adequate food for its bonus. There are numerous popularity hits in the game so a +4 or +8 bonus is nice to have to offset it easily.
I put 8 archers in towers over the wolf spawn and this was more than enough to handle this problem without any real detriment. After taking out the wolves I contracted the rest of my archers to gatehouse in front of my main gate to hit on the bandits. One problem developed when the bandits made a bee line to my ore mines. I had to reload and then put a half dozen archers and some gatehouses at the top of the stairs there to secure against this. I got lucky my ore workers weren't on the path during the raids or I would have lost.
So once I got the mines going it was just a matter of tweaking things and tidying up. Then I turned up the game speed to full, only slowing to handle the intermittent literal and figurative fires that popped up.
I thought I had more than enough time. Then it got closer and closer. And I was sweating bullets knowing that failure meant starting over from the beginning being that any fixing would have to be done from the start.
The final bar came down in Nov. of the last year. I quickly threw down some good things and got the victory without a month to spare.
posted 01-28-06 00:47 EST (US)
